A Matter of some Gravity

[Grayscale]

Hi there.

I read 3 or 4 threads on this topic, but my doubts still remain. I was designing a character that would operate and fight in space, so took upon myself to check what rules we've got.

I will use the term microgravity to refer to any place that has "negligible" gravity, or that would result in a "free fall" state.

1. Per B350, when operating in microgravity, say, aboard a spaceship or outer space, which value should we plug in into the formulas for calculating encumbrance? Or should we just neglect it, being that it would be so low anyway as to make any difference?

Now, for question 2, which is bit more involved:

Still on B350 we have rules for Attributes in different gravities. I would like to focus on DX penalties.

The way I understand it, we got 3 moving parts here: for G-Increments and Attributes Penalties, Improved G-Tolerance and G-Experience.

Improved G-Tolerance increases your increments from 0.2G to a higher number, therefore making it so bigger shifts in gravity are required to impose you a penalty.

G-Experience halves any penalties you have under a specific field of gravity, regardless of Improved G-Tolerance or not.

So let's take a look at some gravity increments and DX penalties:

A. Normal G-Increments and DX penalties for humans:

0,01 - 0,20: -4
0,21 - 0,40: -3
0,41-0,60: -2
0,61- 0,80: -1
0,81-1,19: 0
1,20-1,39: -1
1,41-1,59: -2

B. With Improved G-Tolerance 0,3:
0,01-0,10: -3
0,11-0,40: -2
0,41-0,70: -1
0,71-1,29: 0
1,30-1,59: -1

C. With Improved G-Tolerance 0,5:

0,01-0,50: -1
0,51-1,49: 0
1,50-1,99: -1

And now for the questions:

2a. What G-Increment is microgravity? 0.01? In other words, what's the DX penalty, say, for working in microgravity under example A?

2b. G-Experience: the description of it say to "halve DX penalties". For a character in 0.01G, in situations A, B and C above, that would be -4, -3 a -1, which would halve to -2, -2 and -1 (rounding away from zero)?

2c. G-Experience: B350 actually says that G-Experience makes it so you have only -1 per two G-Increments. This will different results, namely, in situations A, B and C, it would be -2, -1 and 0?

2c-i. And if this is correct, does it mean that G-Experience in any field makes it so from now on you accrue DX penalties at -1 per two increments, regardless of which field you are now?

I have read "Free Fall" in Pyr 3-85 (in which I coudn't fid these answers), and am also aware of the THS approach of simply ignoring DX penalties with G-Experience alone. But I'd like to keep this topic centered on how the Basic Set deals with these issues.

Sorry for the long post and thanks for reading it and any help.

[Fred Brackin]

Okay, question 1. If your G-Increment is .2 but your home gravity is usually 0.0 I think you'd still plug that .2 G into most of the formulas including Encumbrance.

This is a "rules" based answer. If I was trying to work with physics I'd be focussing on the differences between weight and mass. In microgravity you may have no weight but you still have full inertial mass. You still need muscles.

Q 2a is .2 G again.

The rest are "Yes".

[Grayscale]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Okay, question 1. If your G-Increment is .2 but your home gravity is usually 0.0 I think you'd still plug that .2 G into most of the formulas including Encumbrance.

This is a "rules" based answer. If I was trying to work with physics I'd be focussing on the differences between weight and mass. In microgravity you may have no weight but you still have full inertial mass. You still need muscles.

Q 2a is .2 G again.

The rest are "Yes".

Sorry, maybe I failed my reading check, but do clarify:

For 1., I assume a human born and raised in Earth, working in outer space. So you say I should divide his carried load by 0.2 in order to calculate encumbrance? That would make his encumbrance higher in outer space than in the Moon (0.17G, per BS).

For 2., the same question remains: if we take 0.2G as the value for working in outer space, it is still more gravity than the Moon.

Did I interpret you correctly?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Exallted

Sorry, maybe I failed my reading check, but do clarify:

For 1., I assume a human born and raised in Earth, working in outer space. So you say I should divide his carried load by 0.2 in order to calculate encumbrance? That would make his encumbrance higher in outer space than in the Moon (0.17G, per BS).

For 2., the same question remains: if we take 0.2G as the value for working in outer space, it is still more gravity than the Moon.

Did I interpret you correctly?

Ah, sorry. I did not interpret you correctly.

Microgravity is a place where the usual concepts of Encumbrance break.You don't have to lift anything so that requires no expenditure of FP. If the question becomes "How quickly can you move a given load" I'm afraid this si where inertia rears its' ugly head and says "no faster than in 1 G".

[AlexanderHowl]

You can throw things with greater acceleration than 1g. A baseball thrown by a major league pitcher moves at 50 m/s. It takes them ~0.5 seconds to throw, so the acceleration is ~10g. So, the answer is no more than 50 m/s and probably a great deal less.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Exallted

2a. What G-Increment is microgravity? 0.01? In other words, what's the DX penalty, say, for working in microgravity under example A?

The box on B350 says that microgravity is less than 0.1G, for game purposes. Unfortunately it doesn't say why 'microgravity' is an important category. I've decided that for DX penalties it's close enough to zero-G to use the Free Fall rules (B197) in my games. Thus there's no DX, just a skill cap (and for the untrained it's DX-5 or HT-5, so fairly nasty).

As for the G-increments, The B350 rule would give -2, -1, -0. This is the same as if you rounded down when using the rule in B57. As the rules is not for point costs and it's not otherwise stated you should probably round down (see B9).

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

You can throw things with greater acceleration than 1g. A baseball thrown by a major league pitcher moves at 50 m/s. It takes them ~0.5 seconds to throw, so the acceleration is ~10g. So, the answer is no more than 50 m/s and probably a great deal less.

You can't throw baseballs any faster in microgravity than you can in 1 G. The inertia is the same and that's what's important.

[Grayscale]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Microgravity is a place where the usual concepts of Encumbrance break.You don't have to lift anything so that requires no expenditure of FP. If the question becomes "How quickly can you move a given load" I'm afraid this si where inertia rears its' ugly head and says "no faster than in 1 G".

So, in effect, for game purposes, Encumbrance will be at None whenever a character is in microgravity?

Originally Posted by Rupert

The box on B350 says that microgravity is less than 0.1G, for game purposes. Unfortunately it doesn't say why 'microgravity' is an important category. I've decided that for DX penalties it's close enough to zero-G to use the Free Fall rules (B197) in my games. Thus there's no DX, just a skill cap (and for the untrained it's DX-5 or HT-5, so fairly nasty).

B350 states that outer space is actually Zero Gravity, whereas I was using saying that outer space was microgravity (my mistake).

I was working under the assumption that whether you think that outer space is microgravity or zero gravity, it would still place you at some G-increment, and therefore incur in DX penalties.

So do you interpret things as "in outer space, there's no DX penalties" then?

Originally Posted by Rupert

As for the G-increments, The B350 rule would give -2, -1, -0. This is the same as if you rounded down when using the rule in B57. As the rules is not for point costs and it's not otherwise stated you should probably round down (see B9).

And here, you interpret "round down" as rounding towards zero (I was interpreting it as rounding away from zero)?

In essence:

In space, there are no DX penalties, you're capped by Free Fall, and encumbrance is always none?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Exallted

So, in effect, for game purposes, Encumbrance will be at None whenever a character is in microgravity?

If you're not moving then Encumbrance is more like 'NA". However, for purposes of figuring your Dodge that should be your Basic Speed affected by the inertial _mass_ of your load and this should be the same in all gravity fields you can stand up and walk in.

<shrug> I said it was broken.

[Grayscale]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

If you're not moving then Encumbrance is more like 'NA". However, for purposes of figuring your Dodge that should be your Basic Speed affected by the inertial _mass_ of your load and this should be the same in all gravity fields you can stand up and walk in.

<shrug> I said it was broken.

I do not dispute the physics basis for this, but if we apply this to characters in space, one should do away with the the B350 rules for encumbrance in lesser gravities as well, otherwise his encumbrance will be lower on the moon than on space.